Grief and Questions Abound After Fatal Parade Collision

Hundreds gathered Friday in Midland, Tex., for a prayer service for victims of a crash the day before that killed 4 veterans and injured 16 other people.Credit
Tim Fischer/Reporter-Telegram, via Associated Press

MIDLAND, Tex. — One was a Union Pacific freight train bound for Louisiana, a 7,200-foot-long behemoth with 84 cargo cars rumbling through the flat industrial edge of this West Texas city. The other was a popular annual parade for wounded veterans and their spouses, a leisurely cruise through the dusty streets that moved slowly enough that the participants comfortably sat in chairs on the back of flatbed trucks.

About 4:30 p.m. Thursday, four days after Veterans Day, the two processions collided, leaving a deadly, chaotic scene at a rail crossing two miles outside downtown Midland. One dozen veterans who had dodged gunfire and explosives in tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed or injured in the unlikeliest of places, at a so-called Show of Support parade in a patriotic city known as the hometown of Laura Bush and the childhood home of her husband, former President George W. Bush.

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Credit
The New York Times

Four Army and Marine veterans were killed, and 16 veterans and civilians were injured, at least one of them critically. On Friday, there were more questions than answers about what went wrong, and whether mechanical or human error was to blame, as the National Transportation Safety Board began an investigation.

Veterans and their spouses had been seated on the open flatbed trailers of two trucks, one driving in front of the other. The authorities said that the first truck drove over the railroad crossing at South Garfield Street and West Industrial Avenue, but that the second one was traveling over the tracks when the train struck the rear of the vehicle. Witnesses who were either driving in the parade or watching it on the street said the rail crossing’s long gate arms came down on the people seated on the trailer as the truck made its way over the tracks. And they described how the train seemed to come from out of nowhere, blaring its horn, they said, only seconds before impact.

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Parade participants looked on after a flatbed trailer carrying wounded veterans in a parade was struck by a train.Credit
James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram, via Associated Press

“I did not hear the train at all,” said one witness, Joe Cobarobio, 39, who stood filming the parade. “I did not hear the horn as it was approaching the intersection. I only heard it right about three seconds before it slammed into the back of the tractor-trailer.”

At the rail crossing, Purple Heart soldiers became first responders, tending to the injured, and others, relatives and witnesses said, became heroes once more. One of the four who died, Joshua Michael, 34, a retired Army sergeant who had been wounded by an improvised explosive device in Iraq, pushed his wife off the trailer to save her life, relatives said. “I think she was the only one on the float who was not injured,” said Mr. Michael’s mother-in-law, Mary Ruth Hefley, 74. “He was a hero in this Army and a hero in life, in my eyes.”

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Lawrence BoivinCredit
Family photo courtesy of Show Of Support, via Associated Press

Mr. Michael worked as a real estate agent and lived in Converse, Tex., with his wife and two children, Ryan, 14, and Maci, 7. He had met his wife, Daylyn Michael, 34, when both attended Amarillo College. He had two Purple Hearts from service in Iraq. “She said last night the little boy was doing real good,” Ms. Hefley said, referring to her daughter and grandson. “But the little girl just cried. That’s all she would do, is cry.”

The others killed were Gary Stouffer, 37, who served in the Marines for 17 years, was wounded in Afghanistan and is survived by his wife and two children; William Lubbers, 43, who served in the Army Special Forces, had been shot in the arm in Afghanistan and lived in Fayetteville, N.C., with his wife and two children; and Lawrence Boivin, 47, who received a Purple Heart while in the Army in Iraq and leaves a wife, two stepdaughters and a grandson.

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Gary StoufferCredit
Family photo courtesy of Show of Support, via Associated Press

Of four people still at Midland Memorial Hospital, one was in critical condition and three were listed as stable, a hospital spokeswoman said. One person was transferred to a hospital in Lubbock on Thursday night in serious condition, and 11 others have been released, she said.

National Transportation Safety Board officials said investigators had not determined whether the rail crossing’s red flashing lights and gate arms were functioning at the time of the accident. They also said they had not determined whether, as witnesses reported, the gate arms came down on the middle of the flatbed trailer. A spokesman for Union Pacific, Tom Lange, said a preliminary investigation by the company found that the lights and gates at the crossing were working at the time of the crash and that the train crew had properly sounded the locomotive horn.

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Joshua MichaelCredit
Family photo courtesy of Show Of Support, via Associated Press

Federal regulations for train crossings require that flashing lights and bells at the gates begin at least 20 seconds before a train passes. However, in designated quiet zones, the train engineer does not have to blast the horn but can make that call if it appears to be necessary. The crossing in Midland was one of those designated quiet zones. Federal rules require the gate arms to begin to move downward no less than three seconds after the flashing lights begin and to be horizontal at least five seconds before the arrival of the train.

Mark Rosekind, an N.T.S.B. member, said investigators were collecting a number of video and data recordings of the accident. The lead engine, for example, had a forward-facing video camera known as a track image recorder, and other locomotive units had so-called event recorders collecting data.

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William LubbersCredit
Family photo courtesy of Show Of Support, via Associated Press

There were 10 collisions at that rail crossing between 1979 and 1997, but none in the past 15 years, Mr. Rosekind said. None of those collisions led to fatalities. A likely focus of the investigation will be the train’s speed. A Union Pacific spokeswoman said the company changed the speed limit for trains in Midland from 40 miles per hour to 70 m.p.h. in 2006. She said the company had not had any accidents at that crossing since the speed limit was increased.

Mr. Rosekind said the train was traveling 62 m.p.h. at the time of the accident. Its emergency braking had been applied before the collision, but it had not been determined precisely when.

The parade left a downtown hotel on Thursday and then turned south onto Garfield Street, where it crossed the train tracks, escorted by sheriff’s and police officials as well as civilian vehicles. It was headed for a banquet in the veterans’ honor. The train was traveling east; it had started its journey in Los Angeles and was headed for Shreveport, La. The truck that was struck was carrying 26 people in the seats on the flatbed trailer — 12 veterans, 12 spouses and 2 civilian escorts.

Robert Volker was driving his pickup truck near the front of the parade with his wife, Melissa, at his side. Two trucks carrying the veterans and their wives were behind them. Mr. Volker had driven over the railroad crossing when, 15 to 20 seconds later, he heard a loud boom, he said. “We thought at first it was maybe a blown tire,” he said. “We immediately look back and just see dust.”

After the crash, Mr. Volker said, the veterans went to work. “We saw a lot of the soldiers from the first float doing what they do,” he said. “Controlling the scene, helping their comrades, doing what they’re trained to do.”

Manny Fernandez reported from Midland, and Emma G. Fitzsimmons from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on November 17, 2012, on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Grief and Questions Abound After Fatal Parade Collision. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe